by Dan Mitchell | Jan 3, 2026 | Blogs, Economics, Socialism
Nicolas Maduro was one of the worst dictators in the world. Between him an his socialist predecessor, Hugo Chavez, they turned the richest country in Latin America into a basket case. Living standards have collapsed. Millions of people have fled. Severe...
by Dan Mitchell | Dec 3, 2025 | Blogs, Socialism
Venezuela has a despicable and evil government. It is dead-last in the latest edition of Economic Freedom of the World and a miserable #159 (out of 165) in the latest edition of the Human Freedom Index. But rankings don’t capture the...
by Dan Mitchell | Nov 10, 2025 | Blogs, Economics, Free Market, Socialism
The amazing reforms in Argentina are the big story in Latin America. Javier Milei’s libertarian agenda is rescuing an economy that was mired in long-run stagnation because of Peronism, so it’s...
by Dan Mitchell | Sep 6, 2024 | Blogs, Economics, Socialism
Was my three-part series (here, here, and here) on Venezuelan socialism unfair? I focused on boring and technical data regarding living standards. At first glance, those numbers make Venezuela look bad. But maybe per-capita GDP dropped because rich people...
by Dan Mitchell | Sep 1, 2024 | Blogs, Economics, Socialism
I sometimes make the theoretical case against socialism. Usually, this means exposing the flaws of the core components of the socialist ideology. Government ownership of the means of production is a recipe for resource misallocation. Central planning has a...
